Since 1980, the U.S. has seen a population increase of about 30 percent, yet the total prison population has jumped by close to 340 percent. Is there really that much more crime? Is this trend a product of Nixon’s declaration of war on drugs in 1971 or the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984?
Whatever the reason, the fact remains that incarceration rates in the U.S. have grown at an extremely fast pace. The U.S. is the world leader in prisoner populations despite modest declines in the past few years. Although the U.S. has 5 percent of the world population we have 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. While many crimes are deserving of incarceration many other lesser crimes could be dealt with in an alternative manner. Restorative justice is just such an approach that can lead to true rehabilitation and healing for all stakeholders.
An abundance of statistics suggests that standard measures of punitive “rehabilitation” often lead to recidivism. Why is that? The modern criminal justice system views a crime as an offense against the state. What about the victim and the community? It could be argued that removing the perpetrator from the community creates a vacuum. This vacuum is the space where true healing should take place but that cannot happen unless all stakeholders are present.
The philosophy behind restorative justice includes three main stakeholders. Perpetrators, victims and their communities all take active roles in the process. Perpetrators must hold themselves accountable directly to the victims, prove their remorse and show a willingness to make amends. The victim is allowed to express his or her feelings about what happened and given the space to forgive the crime and move on. The community is tasked with identifying ways that it may have contributed to the crime, taking reparative steps and supporting the other two parties in a life-long process. Ideally, the community accomplishes all of this with only minimal support from the criminal justice system saving taxpayers the lion’s share of the $24,000 average annual cost of a prisoner.
With modern-day roots stretching back to the 1970s and the efforts of Howard Zehr, a Mennonite scholar from Virginia, Maine now has two organizations that advocate for restorative justice practices in the Pine Tree State: The Restorative Justice Institute and The Restorative Justice Project of the Midcoast.
A good example of their work can be found in Belfast, where three young men were convicted of the felony crime of aggravated criminal mischief after going on a late-night vandalism spree. Two of the three men completed the project and found the charges reduced to misdemeanors. According to the Bangor Daily News, “in 2012, the court diversion part of the Belfast project helped to facilitate 33 conferences with 46 juvenile offenders, of which 45 were successful and had their charges reduced or dismissed.”
One aspect of restorative justice is some form of meeting in which stakeholders come face-to-face and discuss what happened and how to make it right. In this way the focus is not on the state but on the people directly involved. The focus is redirected from “the man” to the man-next-door, revealing a personal and intimate connection between perpetrators and victims.
If done properly, an intense process of restitution can heal a community in a holistic manner. However, there can be a downside. Some would argue, and rightly so, that fundamentally changing the status quo of the present criminal justice system may be too difficult, or that a growing movement might risk misinterpretation of the program’s values, or that inadequate training can lead to misuse of practices. While these concerns are valid, they merely represent a need for thorough training of facilitators and careful implementation of restorative justice programs.
The present system may be effective in punishing criminals but it is ineffective in preventing crime. Restorative justice represents a holistic approach to healing that shows respect for all parties involved and can create more enduring positive changes in society.
Michael Boardman is a native Mainer who, after living abroad for many years, has settled in Portland. He studies social work at the University of Southern Maine.